Galen Rupp Drops Out of Mile, Then Does Workout

His cuboid bone popped out of place during indoor race.

Galen Rupp doesn’t just run incredible workouts after record-setting races, as he did two weeks ago following his American record for two miles. He even runs hard after mid-race injuries cause him to drop out of races.

That’s what happened Saturday afternoon at the New Balance Indoor Grand Prix meet at the Reggie Lewis Center in Boston. After completing six laps of the eight-lap mile race, Rupp abruptly pulled up and hobbled to the outside of the track. New Zealand's Nick Willis won the slow-starting mile in 3:57.41.

“My heart was in my throat,” his coach, Alberto Salazar, admitted to Runner’s World Newswire Sunday night. “You’re always worried. You know that anything can happen in a race.”

Salazar feared Rupp could have suffered a stress fracture, but changed his mind after Rupp pointed to the area of his left foot that hurt. “I thought it was his cuboid bone, and that was confirmed by our physiotherapist Sean Pena,” Salazar said. Pena judged that the bone had simply popped out of place, and performed an adjustment on it.

A couple of hours later, Rupp warmed up for a few miles at Harvard’s indoor track, and then completed one of Salazar’s patented post-race workouts. “I wouldn’t say it was as hard as the mile repeats he did two weeks ago,” Salazar observed, “but it was very good, and we were pleased. Galen said that his foot felt fine.”

Salazar said he didn’t want to reveal specifics about the workout. “My athletes don’t like it when I tell the competition what we’re doing,” he said. “We don’t want to give away everything.”

Salazar believes that Rupp’s cuboid problem might have been caused by a new pair of spikes Rupp wore in the mile race.

“Galen has very unusual feet that are very wide in the forefoot, and he has always felt cramped in spikes, so we’ve been experimenting with new custom shoes,” Salazar said. “He felt a little bit of jabbing pain right from the beginning, and it just kept getting worse and worse until he stopped. I’ve always told him to stop if he felt a sharp pain.”

Assuming Rupp’s foot continues to feel okay in the coming days, he will probably enter the 1500 and 3000 in the Feb. 22-23 USATF Indoor Nationals in Albuquerque, Salazar said. “The 1500 is just a safety valve,” he continued. “If Galen makes the 3K team, that’s what he’ll run in the world indoor meet.” That competition is scheduled for March 7-9 in Sopot, Poland.

Rupp’s career has been marked by relatively few injuries for an athlete of such high rank and ambition, particularly in recent years when he has recorded his best performances. These include an Olympic silver medal in the 10,000 meters and the American record (26:48.00) at the distance.

“He’s an incredible healer,” Salazar said. “That’s just a God-given talent. It’s not anything he got from my coaching, though I do think that he benefits from all the services we provide.”